Reindeer Flotilla
by Firefly25
Summary: The West Coast Misfits welcome a new member to the team. And while he does bring dedication and valuable skills to the table, the exercise of those latter might well prove that the Chinese did intend "may you live in interesting times" as a curse.
1. File 01: Hello and Welcome

Reindeer Flotilla

File 01: Hello and Welcome

* * *

Legal notes:  
#include stddisc.h

Authour notes:  
I'd been meaning for a while to throw the proverbial hat into the Misfitverse-ficion ring. All that had been needed was a specific point of inspiration, something which could interact with a new character to make life for Joe, X-Man, and Misfit alike... interesting. So, as they say, props to Red Witch for (aside from the whole universe concept in the first place) providing the spark (no I am not going to tell you what it is; you'll see soon enough!) and L1701E for giving that spark kindling and helping to fan it into a (hopefully) proper fire.

* * *

Gunbarrel and Hardcase blinked in unision at the sound, and looked over just in time to see the sheet-metal silhouette target quiver from another hit to its heavily dinged 'head'. While the former nodded his approval of the shooter's aim, Hardcase's reaction was a bit different.  
"That's the fifth one," he yelled over the radio to the other Joes - Quick-Kick, Jester, Kicker, and Firestorm - who were searching the field. "Haven't you found him yet?!" Unsurprisingly and annoyingly, that elicited an almost-unanimous chorous of negatives.  
"I found something!"  
"What's that, Jester?" Malibu Base's third-in-command prayed that said Joe hadn't chosen now to play another prank.  
"It's a Snickers wrapper. He had a snack here, sir, and..."  
"What?"  
"There's some writing on the inside; it reads... 'Ummm, no'." Which revelation caused Hardcase to scowl and Gunbarrel to snicker; yet another 'headshot' brought a quick end to both activities.  
The marksman shook his head. "I think that'll do."  
"Well, okay." Hardcase switched the radio to a different frequency. "Okay, that's it. Everyone off the field."

"So where'd we find this guy, again?" asked Kicker, now that the Joes were clustered around the Humvee.  
Jester shrugged. "I heard some friend of the General recommended him..."  
_One of _Whithalf's_ friends? Oh, great..._ "At least he's nothing like you." Hardcase scowled at the comedian. "**One** of you is... hey where is he, anyways?"  
That question was answered by the rustle of grass at the edge of the clearing. The ghillie-suit-wearing sniper, rifle in one hand, stepped foward. Removed helmet and camouflage 'hood', came to attention and snapped Hardcase a salute.  
"Right here, sir."  
"Do you know what the fine for littering is in the state of California?"  
"Yes, sir."  
"Mm-hmm. Get yourself cleaned up, you're gonna meet your new squadmates."

===

When, out of sheer curiousity, Alison and Rahne had asked Wipe-Out where Firestorm, Jester, and Hardcase had gone - Malibu Base _had_ been rather quiet that day, after all - the SEAL had said something about evaluations. Both girls had taken that to refer to another Joe, and said as much to the other Misfits; they, in turn, had spent much of the afternoon in speculation. Well, once one discounted the latest in Toshiro and Kyle's seemingly endless arguments; and Ace just shaking his head at the latest round of correspondence he'd received from a certain quartet of girls, that is.  
"Hey, guys." Jester wandered in while they were watching Kyle and Toshiro play pool - apparently as a way of settling some argument or other.  
"'Sup, J-dawg?"  
"Yeah, the Thunderbolt wants to know if the new guy made the cut."  
"Yes." It took a moment for the assembled youths to register that the speaker was _not_ Jester, but rather the young man standing next to him.  
Said newcomer was roughly Scott Summers' size, albeit sporting a build which spoke of more regular and intensive exercise than the X-Man field leader seemed to get. Silver eyes studied each of them in turn from underneath eyebrows as purple as the rest of his hair... not that the Misfits found either of those traits unusual; what had seized their collective notice was the fact of his wearing jungle-camo 'utilities' (complete with matching cap tucked under an arm), olive webbing with a few pouches, and black boots. "Yes," he said, "I _did_ make the cut, and hello. It seems we're going to be working together."  
"Um, hi." Rahne's next words gave voice to the next question on everyone's mind, incidentally beating Kyle and Ace to it. "What's your name?"  
"Chance Sergeivich Chekov. And you must be Rahne Sinclair."  
"H-how'd you know?"  
"Recall the incident with that... Sentinel, I believe it's called... back in Bayville. That sparked a good deal of media focus on the town, and in particular on the students of the Xavier Institute."  
"Oh." Most of which attention, the Scottish girl remembered, had been - and, indeed, still was - less than friendly.

"You're gonna like it here, C," Terrell was saying after Jester had wandered off, introductions had been made, and Chance shown his room. "Sure, we train pretty hard - you look like you're used to that, right? - but the Joes're cool for the most part. Plus, there're the great beaches..."  
"Just like home." Which momentarily derailed the speedster's train of thought.  
"Home? I didn't know Russia had beaches."  
Chance actually smiled, briefly. "Hawaii does."  
"And I'm sure you'll find the girls here just as fine. Say, I could show you the nightlife around here...?"  
"So he can watch you set a new record for most slaps received in a single hour, mate?"  
"Ha-ha, Tommy."  
"Well, if anyone's going to show the new guy how to charm the ladies, I'd think it'd be someone who actually knows what they're doing."  
"It's a gift," Ace Starr chimed in from a nearby beanbag. He looked Chance over. "Looks like someone has a career goal in mind."  
"Yes, I do."  
"If you're going to hit it off with the chicks, I think you'd better find something more, y'know, current." Terrell spread his arms, showing off his own wardrobe.  
Chance arched an eyebrow. "That... is not me."  
"Yeah, I can't really see you in a basketball jersey and jeans." Athena laughed.  
"I'm telling you, image is everything. You've gotta show them that you're with it, or they won't even give you... the time.. of..." The African-American speedster trailed off, realizing that the expression on Chance's face effectively said 'I'm-not-buying-it'.  
"Question: assuming you're telling the truth, that you have to put up the 'right image' to interest the girls... well, that means they're not necessarily interested in _you_ per se, yes?"  
"Um, well..." Terrell hadn't expected that, didn't have an answer for it. It didn't help that Athena was chuckling, or that Chance was waiting for that answer, an expectant smile curling his lips.  
"And if that's true," Chance pressed on, "wouldn't that make the girls in question poor long-term choices?" By now, this particular contest had become the center of attention - even Toshiro and Kyle had pretty much forgotten about their pool game, as eager as anyone else to see how - or if - Terrell would get out of the hole he'd dug himself. This was a line of logic the speedster had never considered, not even peripherally, and he was being asked to do so, and right now... a state of affairs which was not sitting well.  
"You've never had a girlfriend, have you?" It was meant as a barb; the answer, however, gave no indication of recognizing the question as anything of the sort.  
"Yes, never." Which to Rahne seemed almost a shame; surely someone who was smart and cute would've found one by now, or at least have some girls anxious to be in that position. The fact of Chance looking like he'd be more at home on a military base than any of the many social events which punctuated high school life wasn't _that_ big a deterrent, was it?  
"Think about it, Terrell. In the meantime, excuse me; ET phone home." With that Chance wandered off to make use of a computer.  
"Oooh." Tommy reached out to pat Terrell on a shoulder; pulling his hand back at the last second, he made a show of blowing on his fingers. "Extra crispy," he pronounced, to the others' amusement.  
It was Kyle who brought up the next obvious question. "Yeah, but the Thunderbolt wants to know if he can fight as well as he can talk."  
"I would not be surprised if he can. The mind, after all, is the first weapon, and the warrior who masters it is on his way to excellence with all others."  
"Nobody asked you, Sushi!"  
Only a warning glare from Athena kept the dispute from escalating beyond words.

===

Indeed, the West Coast Misfits learned several things about their new member over the next several days. The biggest such discovery - made more so by its not having been asked about until then - was that like Daniel Webber on the East Coast team, Chance did not have an X-Gene; credit for the unusual hair and eye coloration could be laid squarely at the feet of a one-in-some-millions genetic confluence. Second, that the utilities were not for show: military service really _was_ his major career goal.  
What gave them reason for a degree of unease, though was Jester's finally relating the events that had led to Chance's earning his place on the team. While they could understand and even respect the discipline reaching that level of skill had required, the idea of someone their age being as proficient and comfortable with firearms as any soldier in active service just did not seem in their worldview to sit quite right.  
Going hand-in-hand with that was another fact: stealth and infiltration were Chance's other strong suits. One night exercise challenged him with stealing important documents from a ship at dock while remaining undetected. .. which, of course, the other Misfits were supposed to guard. None of them would soon forget just how that had played out: the exercise's conclusion found the 'documents' gone and Kyle (whose turn it had been at the time to stand guard inside the room with said documents) 'dead'. And nobody else - not even Athena, Ace, Rahne, or Tommy, with their enhanced senses - had had the first clue that something was amiss until Theresa had gone to take up her shift inside.  
"It's a good thing," Tommy had said afterwards, "that he's on _our_ side." Kyle's reaction, rightfully attributed to being the one who'd 'died' with no warning whatsoever before the hand clapped over his mouth and the rubber knife pressed to the back of his neck, was... louder, and somewhat less even-handed. Had that been for-real, Wipe-Out explained, the blade would've slid in and severed the spinal cord just where it left the base of the skull, making for a quick, quiet, and relatively clean demise.  
Chance didn't gloat about it, though (a good thing in everyone's books); rather, he seemed to think his capability at such things perfectly normal (which proved to _not_ be exactly a calming thing).  
All of which had led to speculation as to what sort of parents would raise a son with _that_ particular skill set, a question not really answered when Chance explained that his father had come from Russia, back when it was the nexus of the Soviet Union, and was now a consultant. What Sergei Iosifovich had done before leaving the USSR, and what sort of 'consulting' he was involved in now, were lines of inquiry politely - but firmly - brought to a quick end. This 'information gap' perhaps explained Kyle's opinion that Chance was, in fact, the result of a government program similar to the Hydra effort which had spawned Athena.  
They also discovered that his taste in arcade games gravitated, to no one's surprise, towards the likes of the Silent Scope and Virtua Cop series. While the other Misfits were not surprised that he excelled at those games, watching him prove that apparently proved highly disturbing to everyone else, including the manager and two police officers who happened to be killing some off-duty time playing Soul Calibur II.

* * *

After-action notes:  
-Russian naming conventions:  
it is common in Russia for someone's middle name to be a derivation of their father's;  
using an individual's first and middle name is a common semiformal means of addressing/reference

That clarified, I will concede that the last third or so of this chapter could stand for some fleshing out (maybe in a 'special edition'?), but it does serve to lay down some basic concepts opportunity for whose elaboration will come in good order.  
And yes, I know that 'stddisc.h' is supposed to have an underscore between 'std' and 'disc', and be enclosed in angle brackets;I haven't figured out how to do so without their being seen as part of an HTML tag.

Coming in File 02: 'Enter Temnota'...  
Chance has a plan in mind whose successful accomplishment promises no end of headaches for the Hellfire Club; all he has to do is take a trip to Boston, infiltrate the Massachussetts Academy, and turn a certain computer on for a short period of time. Simple, yes?  
Yes, except that Kyle, having entirely the wrong idea as to the nature of the op, invited himself along...


	2. File 02: Meet the Neighbors

File 02: Meet the Neighbors

Authour notes:

Well, it certainly took long enough; I went and got distracted by several other things including but not limited to: devising potential future plot threads; Ace Combat 4; Everything or Nothing; and Ace Combat 5... which means that the upcoming releases of Ace Combat Zero, Gun, and From Russia with Love will in all likelihood bode ill for quick updates.

* * *

Were one to ask Scott Summers at that moment why he was in a good mood, he would be able to present more than one answer. For one, it was shaping up to be a fine summer day, with a comfortable breeze and only a few high clouds. Second was the simple fact of _nothing_ going on: no Apocalypse making a very premature and unwelcome return; no Magneto making his next obvious move in his agenda of mutantkind under his leadership; and not a sign of the Hellfire Club doing... whatever it was they were up to.

Third, and perhaps most important to the X-Men's field leader, was that the Avengers, as well as both 'official' Misfit teams, were all supposedly on assignment. These assignments' nature interested Scott only insofar as they were far away from Bayville.

_Yes,_ he thought, nodding in agreement with the weather forecast being read over the radio. _It's definitely going to be a good day._ On the heels of that thought came another, that they should bring some refreshments to poolside; in fact, he was about to ask Jean if she had any preferences in that department when...

"Finally...!" There was no mistaking that voice. "The Thunderbolt... has come back... to Bayville!"

And that quickly, Scott's predicted good day curled into a whimpering fetal ball, seeking mercy from the assault which was the arrival of the West Coast Misfits. "Here we go..." he muttered. Louder: "I thought you guys were on the clock."

Ace Starr fielded that question ("That's the East Coast crew, dude.") before a squealing Paige attached herself to him. Scott just shook his head, thankful for the small mercy of it not being Paul Starr, Whose presence would have had a much more... widespread... impact on the Institute's female residents, a fact which irked Scott (and, indeed, most of the Institute's men) no end.

"So _why_ are you here...?" Jean wanted to know.

"As Lance said to ye once, our happy little family has grown..."

- shouts echoed from the house just then ("Get outta' th' kitchen!" "Chill out Sheila, I'm _hungry!_"), confirming that one Tommy 'Chilljaw' Sharpe had indeed found his way to the refreshments -

"...an' we thought we'd be good neighbors and make the introductions."

"Yeah." Kyle again. "The Thunderbolt thought we should show the new guy the jabronis we have to work with sometimes."

"Kyle, I think that's en-" Scott got no further with either the sentence or his attempt to get off the chair: both were brought to a quick halt by the Bostonian electrokinetic's getting in his face.

"It doesn't matter what you think!"

_So this is the famous Xavier Institute,_ was his first thought.

His second was that Rahne had _not_ been exaggerating in her description of how the two teams tended to get along; this opinion Chance shared with the bubblegum-chewing blonde who walked by at just that moment.

"Got that right," Tabitha said once she'd recovered from her surprise. "Kyle's about this close to smacking the taste out of ol' Scooter's... hey, who are you?"

"You could say I'm why those two are at it again. And why Tommy's had occasion to pillage your kitchen; as well as the reason Sam is doubtless looking for a place to hide." A large cardboard box with the letter 'A' stenciled on one side shuffled by.

"Um-hm." Tabitha blew a small bubble. "A regular chaos magnet."

"Apparently, Tabitha. Chance Sergeyvich Chekov; nice to meet you."

"How'd you know my name?"

"Rahne proved quite informative." A shrug. "Given how things are going, it's fortunate she insisted on sharing everything she thought I'd need to know about you folks."

"New guy, huh?"

"Got it in one."

"So what do you do?"

"Well..."

Just then, Scott and Kyle's verbal exchanges came to a quick end with the older boy having his head smacked by a lounge chair, followed by getting a knee to a very sensitive spot. Whimpering, he collapsed and tried to squirm away, hands covering certain injured anatomy. "Know your role and shut your mouth!" Kyle crowed.

"Tabby," Jean called, "could you get Scott to the infirmary? 'Blunderbolt' here needs a good spanking."

"You can _try_, Red!" crowed Kyle. "Just bring it!"

Among the many things he'd learned was that a unit could be greatly affected by the mental state of its leader. While he was not a trained psychologist (a trade which he'd heard one of the East Coast crew was teaching himself), the various anecdotes making the rounds about Scott Summers gave Chance cause to worry (briefly) about the state of the X-Men. Granted, Lance, Kyle, and so on weren't exactly being any great help in that department, but still...

_What the hell were he and Kyle arguing about anyway?_ "Is this sort of thing normal?" he asked the blonde as they rounded the last corner.

"Yep. You guys seem to have a knack for driving 'im loopy." Tabitha shrugged - at least, insofar as it was possible to do while helping carry a whimpering Scott. "Well, aside from you, anyway... hey, I still wanna know, what _do_ you do?"

"Familiar with Splinter Cell?"

Tabitha nodded. "I think so... saw a couple of the TV commercials."

"If you believe Ace, I'm supposed to be the next Sam Fisher... ah, here we are."

The door opened almost immediately after being knocked upon, which was not that much of a surprise; the loud bagpipe playing which stopped when they entered, however, was.

Hank McCoy was momentarily surprised to see Tabitha and someone he didn't recognize carrying Scott into his infirmary. "What happened?"

"Kyle," was Tabitha's one-word response.

"Okay, lass," the blue-furred, kilt-wearing mutant said. "Ah, who's the lad with ye?" he asked next, after Scott had been laid on a bed.

"I'm Chance."

"Ah'm Scottish an' drunk; nice t'meet ye."

To which Chance simply nodded as he and Tabitha took their leave. Back in the hall, he wondered, "Is he always drunk?"

"No, not always. Looks like he's gotten into the Scottish whiskey again."

"So that would explain the bagpipes, kilt, and accent."

"Sure does. Last week, he had some sake, and was running around the mansion in full samurai armor. Day before yesterday, Logan and Warren bought some English beer..."

"Let me guess: Dr. McCoy, soccer hooligan."

"Close; English punker."

_And I'd believed the good doctor's flights of fancy mere exaggeration,_ he thought as Tabitha shifted gears to share her take on how the X-Men got along with the 'original' Misfits, selected points of which led him to wonder if this... concentrated eccentricity, for lack of a better phrase, was an inevitable collateral effect of an active X-gene. Probably not - such a trait was most rare among the Joes, and were their hijinks (or at least rumors thereof) not instutional legend among America's armed forces?

"Hey." Tabitha had stopped in the middle of explaining how one Webber Torque had become a Msifit, because it reminded her of a question she'd been close to asking earlier. "How'd you end up with these guys anyway?"

"A friend of the family happened to share Ace's opinion..." - said feral ambled by just then, trying to disentangle himself from an estatic Paige - "...and I thought his recommendation was a good idea, so I volunteered." Exactly what business this individual was in was something Chance saw little sense in bringing up just now.

"You haven't met the others yet, have you?"

"No, not really..."

"C'mon, I'll introduce you." A flight of stairs and some turns brought them to a room full of computers and occupied by a quintet of the X-Men. "Hey guys!" The 'guys' - Remy, Piotr, Ray, Kurt, and Fox - looked up from whatever they were doing. "This is Chance; he's with the West Coast Misfits."

"What's with the hair?" demanded Fox. That question was ignored.

After the introductions and 'nice to meet you's, Kurt asked aloud, "We need another player for Halo; wanna join?"

Shrugging, Chance took a seat at a nearby terminal. "Surely." Only Remy saw the brief grin - so similar to his own when he was about to join a game he was at home in - and was at once certain that some egos would not take subsequent events well.

"Where did Chance wander off to?" Toshiro wanted to know a short time later, back at poolside.

"He met Ray and the others." Tabitha helped herself to another lemonade. "I think they're playing Halo..." Terrell and Rictor started laughing just then. "What's so funny?"

"Halo?"

"Uh-huh." That elicited a hummed rendition of a funeral march from the sonic generator and the speedster. "What?"

"I hope they handle losing well." Athena snickered.

Tommy finished off a hamburger. "Trust us, Sheila. They won't know what hit 'em. Kyle sure didn't."

"Hey!"

The sides were evenly matched in terms of numbers and quality... until now, anyway. Chance's arrival to fill out the red team had removed the need for rotating sit-outs. And proceeded to rain on the blue team's parade.

"Damn!" spat Ray, watching the camera view pan around his virtual corpse, the countdown-to-respawn timer beeping tauntingly at him. When it had been just him and Fox (or, alternately, Kurt) playing against Remy and Piotr, the flow had been more back and forth; now, though... now, the red team had taken a solid lead. And Chance had the infuriating tendency of escaping notice - the only time they'd have an idea of where he might be was when one of them had their head taken apart by a sniper round. Or was smeared all over their surroundings by a plasma grenade that'd been stuck on their back. Or took a melee attack to the back of the head. Or...

Fox muttered, "What kinda nick is 'Temnota', anyway?"

"A Russian one." Piotr tried (unsuccessfully) to stifle a chuckle. "It means 'darkness' or 'oblivion'. Quite fitting, no?"

Whatever the Detroit native was going to say by way of rejoinder was preempted by the arrival of a pair of Joes: both blonde, one with semi-long hair and a green headband, the other wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt.

"Chuckles, Hi-Tech." Chance left his terminal to shake their hands. "I assume everything is in readiness."

"Absoloutely, Temnota. We're good to go."

Turning to face his new acquaintances - all of whose expressions save Remy's betrayed various degrees of bemused surprise - Chance said one last thing to them before walking out of the room with the Joes:

"It's been interesting; see you around."

"Well," Remy said after the door closed, "Remy glad he's with th' Misfits."

"What!" Ray again.

"Jus' a hunch, mind you." The Cajun leaned back in his chair. "Whithalf may seem a li'l touched in the head, but y' don't get those stars by bein' a fool where it matters."

"So it is not a question of if he made the cut, but of why."

"Yes Piotr, that's it. That's it exactly. An' perhaps we already have a clue."

Kurt finished off the donut he really shouldn't have brought into the room. "I think Tabitha might know. She brought him." Which was considered a sensible line of reasoning.

"Ah can see how he got to 'kill' Kyle over here, but not how he got past all of ya - twice." Rogue shook her head in disbelief at the recounting of it. "'Specially when three of ya got senses like Wolverine's. How'd Chance do it? Can he turn invisible, like Fox or somethin'?"

"Pretty well, I've been told."

It took most of the Southern girl's self-control not to scream as she turned, utter surprise evident in her expression, to get her first look at the subject of conversation. On whom, it occured to her, the ash-grey jeans and matching denim jacket seemed to look more like a uniform than the casual wear they were supposed to be.

And even as that thought formed, the answer to her other question reached Rogue's ears: "And... 'or something'."

Both answers just raised more questions, and hearing Tabitha (among others) snickering was not helping. "Ya knew he was back there, right?" she asked them.

"You should've seen the look on your face, Roguey." _So Ace wasn't kidding._

"Aye," Rahne chimed in, "'twas priceless."

"We'd wanted to do that to Scott." Athena speared an apple with a claw, took a bite out of it. "Kyle got to him first, though."

"Theresa," Chance said just then, dispelling Rogue's mental image of Scott taking that surprise worse than she had, "the... project I was working on has been green-lighted."

Which the Irishwoman had suspected, having just noticed the pair of Joes waiting near the mansion. "Good luck to ye, then, and godspeed."

"Thank you. Rogue, Tabitha, nice to meet you both." And with that, Chance left as quietly as he had arrived.

"Is he always that quiet?" Rogue asked next; that earned her an amused smile from Rictor. One did not hear Chance, the Hispanic reassured her, unless he so wished.

Kyle snorted. "The Thunderbolt wishes he'd stop doing that." And with that, he got up and headed into the mansion.

"So where...?"

"Does he come from?" Theresa finished, glad that their new teammate had made a good impression on some of the X-Men at least. "One of General Whithalf's acquaintances referred him, but..."

"You mean the devil," snapped Ray, who had arrived with some of the others in time to hear the question. "Tabby, you knew he'd...?"

"How bad was it?" Tabitha couldn't help but chuckle; behind her Terrell snickered, and Rictor high-fived him.

Remy just shook his head. "Brutal."

"Let me guess, never saw it coming."

"Bingo," deadpanned Kurt.

"Consider yourselves fortunate." Athena took another bite from her apple. "It was just a video game."

Remy was quick to draw a conclusion from that statement: "You mean he can do that for real?"

"Yeah, Swamp Rat, he does it pretty well."

"So Remy was right: Whithalf brought 'im on for de black work."

"Like Spetsnaz, da?" Piotr speculated, snickering.

Just as Ororo had her greenhouse, Forge had his own 'territory': one of the subterranean laborotories, not too far from the infirmary wherein Scott was convalescing. This was where Kyle found the Native American inventor.

"Hey, Forge."

"Be with you in a bit."

"Just gotta quick question: is it true one of your gizmos turned Shipwreck and Storm into kids?"

Forge tapped away at his laptop. "It was _supposed_ to induce controlled cellular regeneration; there're still a few bugs to work out..."

_Hmmm..._ Kyle looked around the room. Here was what looked like an ambulatory cherry bomb; there, a chemistry experiment of some kind; and... "Is this it?" he wondered, hefting a largish pistol-like device.

"Yeah... just, be careful what you touch in here, all right?"

Because Forge had turned his attention back to his journal, both Kyle's nod and grin escaped his notice; he did, however, hear the younger Wildfire reassure him that yes, he'd be very careful what he touched. And after somewhat more than a minute's worth of relative silence he concluded that Kyle had simply walked off; reassured of that fact by a quick look around the lab, he once more buried himself in his writing.

* * *

After-action notes:

And the game is on, more or less. This file was added as an attempt to head off at the pass concerns about the overall flow of the early storyline, as well as get in some first impressions before the evolution takes off in earnest. My apologies for the delay, but - aside from the partial list of reasons cited above - I wanted to get this right.

Coming in File 03: 'Arc Dream'...

The Massachusetts Academy is introduced to Chance and his mysterious project... pity they won't be immediately aware of that fact. And exactly _why_ is Kyle interested in that more infamous of Forge's inventions, anyway?


End file.
